Facebook is rolling out its music services to more countries in Europe. Instagram Music is now available in over 30 European countries.
Facebook and Instagram users in the Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Romania, and Slovakia can now use a range of music features. Music from “a vast catalog of international and local songs” can be added to personal videos and live feeds.
People in these seven countries can now add songs to their Facebook and Instagram Stories. This feature mimics services like TikTok – which is eating Facebook’s lunch in the younger demographic.
Lip Sync Live on Facebook is also now available in these countries. Friends can follow along with a performance in real-time and see the lyrics as you sing. Lip Sync Live is available when choosing to go Live on Facebook. The feature displays the name of the artist and song with links to their official Facebook pages.
Finally, the roll-out also includes sharing music on a Facebook Profile. Facebook users can add videos with music in a new music section. The Instagram ‘music questions’ sticker is also rolling out to these countries. Fans can respond to questions with a sticker featuring a song from the music library.
Facebook says it plans to bring all of these features to even more markets. The strategy makes sense, according to leaked audio obtained from a summer Facebook meeting.
While these features are great for emulating the TikTok experience — they’re hardly a reason to convert from one social media platform to another.
TikTok’s explosive growth is pulling the younger generation away from Facebook’s massive sphere of influence. When asked about his strategy in dealing with TikTok’s growth, Zuckerberg says the company plans to target areas where TikTok hasn’t caught on yet. Expanding Facebook and Instagram music features means lessening TikTok’s influence in those regions. Meanwhile, TikTok has poached at least two dozen employees from Facebook since 2018.